Chapter Six
Liliana was determined not to sleep.
She wanted every second of this wonderful night, but lying in his arms in their red-and-gold bed, her head resting on his chest, felt like sedation. Their bodies were warm, identically so, and the feel of him stroking her hair or her arm as they sleepily spoke was idyllic.
They spoke about her all-girls school versus his private one. How she was so awkward with people. Chatty, but deep down shy.
‘Why did you wait?’ he asked.
‘Because…’ She lay there, an answer on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed it back.
I think I was waiting for you.
Too needy?
Too much?
But the truth.
‘Because…?’ he prompted.
‘I don’t know,’ she finally answered. ‘I guess I’m not very used to boys or men. School was all girls, and there was just my mum…’
‘Does she have a partner?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I think she’d drop everything for him, even now.’ She thought back. ‘His wife found out.’
She liked that he remained silent. There was just the stroke of his hand on her arm, or sometimes he toyed with her hair.
‘I was about seven or eight and there was a knock at the door. I thought it was a friend wanting to play. Instead, it was this angry-looking lady. It was awful,’ she admitted. ‘I ran up to my room and hid…’ She gave a low laugh. ‘I hate confrontation.’
‘She wasn’t cross with you, surely?’ Then he was silent and lifted her chin so she looked up. ‘Did she know about you?’
‘Not until then. I have my father’s colouring.
’ She thought back to that awful day, and the terrible things that had been said about her very existence.
‘I’d always felt like the odd one out, but that day made it so much worse.
I heard my mum say I was an accident, and his wife saying her children would always come first.’
It was so calm being in his arms. She could tell him about that terrible time and somehow his touch took the sting out of her shame.
‘After that, he used to come down now and then, but not…’ She felt tears sting her eyes and not even the balm of his embrace could take away the pain of this memory. ‘Just not to see me. I worked it out when I was eleven or so that he’d never really been there to see me.’
‘How?’
He wanted, Liliana realised, to hear it.
To hear her. ‘We got let out of school early, and I came home and they were sitting having a coffee… I was thrilled to see him, I always was. I just assumed he was here for dinner, but then he looked at the time and said he had to go.’ She sniffed, but knew a tear had dropped onto his chest and hoped he didn’t know.
‘I realised he’d come to see my mother, that he hadn’t expected me to be home. ’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes, it was obvious once I knew. There were plates in the kitchen, they must have had lunch. I realised then that he didn’t think of me as his family. He’d just come to see my mum. I think they saw each other a lot more than I knew… It really hurt.’
‘I bet.’
‘I’d got it in my head that he couldn’t get away much, because of his work and such…’ She had made up so many excuses for him. ‘Delivering foals and things.’
‘Kitten emergencies,’ Rafiq said, and she smiled because she had told him about the lies she’d told to keep the fantasy of having a family intact.
‘I didn’t have anything to do with him after that.’
He squeezed her bare arm and she felt better for having told another, truly.
‘So, what was your worst day?’ she asked sleepily and then winced.
‘Oh, God.’ She sat up; he had said not to ask about it.
‘Rafiq, I really am sorry, I just forgot about your scars.’ She really had. ‘Does that make me selfish?’
‘No.’ He smiled. ‘It’s very nice that you forgot about them.’ It really was and he pulled her back into his embrace. ‘Anyway, that wasn’t the worst…’ There had been many beatings, many days of torture, but there wasn’t one he could separate. They had all been their own version of hell.
‘Still your father refuses to help you…’ The guards continued with their taunts.
Rafiq stared ahead.
‘All he has to do is withdraw his support for the King of Al-Nawar.’
Rafiq knew his father would never back down and while it hurt, while he felt forgotten, he refused to show it.
‘Your family thinks little of you…’
He would rather the lash of the whip than the verbal taunts, but not once did he let them know that.
‘Your father would lose his own sons for a country that isn’t even his own.’
That hurt.
His father would support the uprising in Al-Nawar rather than negotiate to free his sons, but again, Rafiq refused to react.
‘And your brother gave you up.’
That sideswiped him a touch. ‘Hichvaght!’ Rafiq had even given a sneering smile as he’d refuted—Never!
‘Of course he did. How do you think we got into your home? How else could we know about the tunnel?’
‘Hichvaght!’ Rafiq had said again, but perhaps with less certainty. For a second it was as if part of his soul left his body, or something tore in his heart. ‘Khalid would never.’
The fire was dying and he should get up and throw on a log, but instead he stared at the ceiling, stroking her hair.
And he would never see her again. He could admit things he never could in his real life.
This night was just about them, and so he told her one of his worst days. ‘My brother betrayed me.’
Liliana went to sit up again. She honestly hadn’t expected him to tell her anything and had been secretly kicking herself for being insensitive about his scars, but he pulled her down to his chest.
‘What happ—’ She stopped talking, remembering how gentle it had felt when he hadn’t asked questions or delved, just let her tell him what she wanted.
‘I don’t talk about it, even with my family. It feels disloyal to his memory,’ he said. ‘I think deep down, they know what he did. My father cannot look at me, we cannot talk about him.’
Liliana frowned, wishing he would tell her what had happened, but knowing it wasn’t her place to ask.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Rafiq said, but not unkindly.
Nor did he want to expose her to his colder, distant self. Saying his brother had betrayed him out loud had hollowed him. He had already admitted more than he ever had, and it felt odd to have voiced the truth that had been in his head for fourteen years.
Khalid had betrayed him. He had told the guards a secret only they and their father knew.
And yes, they must have put him through hell; Rafiq was in no doubt as to that.
But there was another thing he was certain of—he would never have told his captors about the tunnel, never would he have given them access to his brother.
Hichvaght.
Never.
He slid her up his body, lowered his head and closed that topic with a kiss that led them back to heaven.
They made love through the night and they shared parts of themselves that they wanted to.
And while he did not tell her more about Khalid, or how he’d received the scars, he did share other things. Things he’d long since stopped thinking about… He wasn’t even sure how this forgotten piece of him came up.
‘You were a sprinter?’
‘Ages ago,’ he said and nodded. ‘When I was at university.’
‘Did you do hurdles?’ she asked. ‘I hated them at school.’
His chest lifted in a silent laugh. ‘No, no hurdles.’
‘Did you have a favourite?’
He thought back. ‘The four hundred metres…’ He breathed in deeply, just recalling the velocity and speed and the sheer exhilaration. ‘I only did it up till twenty-one though.’
‘Most people give up after school.’
‘No, I loved it.
‘So, you were a serious sprinter.’
‘For a while.’
‘How come you stopped?’
‘Just…’ He breathed in. ‘I lost form. I guess life got in the way.’
‘When your brother died?’
His hand stopped mid-stroke of her arm. ‘You’re very observant.’
‘I am.’ She smiled and felt his chest hairs tickling her cheek. It was so nice lying here talking. It really had been the most wonderful night. ‘What time is your flight?’
‘I have to leave here around seven.’
There was no clock she could see and Liliana did not want to delve for her phone. It didn’t matter anyway; whatever time it was now, was too close to the end of them.
‘What will you do today?’ Rafiq asked.
‘Sleep,’ she said, only that wasn’t an honest answer and she sat up and looked at him. ‘I can’t hide from you, Rafiq.’
‘I don’t want you to hide.’
And so, she answered him honestly. ‘I’ll probably go home and cry my eyes out,’ Liliana admitted. ‘And then sleep, and then…’ He was stroking her breast. ‘I don’t know, I’ve never done any of this before.’ Not just the sex, but the feeling of being so close to another. ‘I’ve got a confession.’
‘You’re hungry?’
‘I am,’ Liliana said, ‘but it’s not that.’
‘Tell me.’
‘On the tube…’
‘Yes?’
‘I think I knew I’d missed my stop.’
He smiled. ‘You think?’
‘Okay, I knew.’
‘I didn’t have a stop in mind, but I chose not to look up too.’
‘Really?’
‘I think we were just enjoying each other too much for it to end.’
It had to end though.
For Rafiq, this was unsustainable. Already she felt a little too close to his heart, and that was somewhere he didn’t want another to be. Even if he hadn’t shared the details, he couldn’t quite believe he had told her about Khalid’s betrayal.
He regretted telling her, in fact.
Liliana had no regrets.
He made love to her again, and then they shared breakfast in bed, feeding each other between kisses, and there was nothing she would change about this night.
One thing.
There would be no morning.